Harry Potter HBO TV Series Photos Reveal Dumbledore, McGonagall And Snape

As many friends of Hogwarts have no doubt discovered today, the new "Harry Potter" TV series trailer has offered us a first look at HBO's upcoming reboot. The trailer also offers some interesting looks at hitherto unrevealed key characters — and now, HBO has dropped first-look images for three major Hogwarts players. 

The images reveal the "Harry Potter" series' versions of Albus Dumbledore (John Lithgow), Minerva McGonagall (Janet McTeer), and Severus Snape (Paapa Essiedu). Dumbledore is standing in a Hogwarts hall looking more or less like his two elderly movie incarnations, played by Richard Harris and Michael Gambon. Meanwhile, McTeer's McGonagall opts for a more traditional "stern professor" look than the witchy Maggie Smith version. 

Essiedu's Snape, on the other hand, look considerably more youthful than the movie version played by Alan Rickman. This actually makes perfect sense, since Snape is in his thirties throughout the book series' events, and is specifically meant to be in the same age group as Harry's parents, James and Lily. 

The trio join the list of the many characters from the "Harry Potter" show that HBO has been slowly revealing as of late. Apart from them, the trailer's full of recognizable faces, including Dominic McLaughlin's Harry, Arabella Stanton's Hermione Granger, Alastair Stout's Ron Weasley, and Nick Frost's Rubeus Hagrid. 

The many small details in the HBO "Harry Potter" series' trailer also reveal a number of things to come, including the fact that the first season's title will, perhaps unsurprisingly, be "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone." On the whole, however, the "Harry Potter" trailer has everyone saying that the show looks a bit too close to the movies for comfort, despite some added details that the big screen adaptations never featured. It remains to be seen whether the series can differentiate itself from the well-liked films and stand on its own two legs. 

"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" will premiere on HBO on Christmas Day, 2026.